


The undercurrent of you

by winterysomnium



Category: DCU - Comicverse
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-09
Updated: 2012-12-09
Packaged: 2017-11-20 17:44:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/588039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winterysomnium/pseuds/winterysomnium
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rain never gravitates.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The undercurrent of you

**Author's Note:**

> The contents described as not appealing by Tim don't have to be not appealing in general. Tastes differ. I respect that.

Rain never gravitates. Never pulls him to its angles, never steers him into directions, into the ground, doesn’t let him share the wet, round freckles it leaves across the pavement, the steel of machines, his shoulders. It doesn’t drown him like the ocean can, like seas will if he forgets why he’s swimming in the first place, why he’s fighting for the surface, for the sun right above, why for once, he doesn’t want to stand on solid grounds. (Grounds that are slow, salty sands, slippery stones he won’t touch, black depths that remind him of tar, of the molten insides of Clayface, the unsteady shapes, a different suffocation.)

Tim rarely went to the beach, to explore the shores; Gotham’s covered in oil stains and old blood; other cities too far, too crowded, too limited inside of his mask.

He skips the shores and goes for the sea, for the drag of air, for the sights only Robin searches for and if he ever stays longer, if he waits to drown, if the pressure exploding under his chest is so soothing he doesn’t feel the strain, the decompression around him, he doesn’t tell.

It might scare them. How he tests his skin whenever he bathes, how he gasps under showers because they can’t make him implode like the soapy bath, the muddy river, the cold, shallow sea can, they won’t make him cave in, curl into his own bones, won’t spread comfort evenly, into every dip and seam, every pocket and string of his person; they just brush. Clean in the superficial ways people recognize; you’re sad but scented after summer.

(He wastes away from the inside out, from the down to the up, from the back of his teeth to the sound on his lips; he’s _somewhere_ , something he can’t trust.)

Jason invaded that, Tim suspects. Scanned the depths, the shallows Tim can’t show for himself, pushed his cowl into slits, blind lenses and mute mouths, lifted the damp tips of Tim’s hair, the matted shine stuck in his eyes for every hour, kissed Tim on the back of his neck, under the unseen peak of his axis, pressed a consciousness into his spine, held his shoulders in his gun powder palms and didn’t say a damn word as he sucked on Tim’s sea salt skin; didn’t move upwards to his ears, didn’t change Tim’s perspective, the angle of his chin just to run away into his mouth, to run from Tim, from the hitch of affection, from them both, _didn’t._

Just put a triangle on the top of his spine, a mouth and two palms, ten fingertips, three spots of heat and it held Tim upright for _days_ ; he felt it under his weight when he lied against his pillow.

(Jason was quiet and Tim wished the world would have been too.)

It’s louder now than then. Now there’s a storm, vast enough to flicker lights like candles, to buzz around his ears, slip under his boots and today: it’s nearly an undercurrent.

As if the world’s turning around and the skies are bottoms of oceans, of rivers and strings of streams, as if they’re falling apart over the city, against the flat roofs and pointy, sharp towers, over the exhaustion that differs from person to person, something Gotham piles in corners.

Piles in corners of buildings they leave footsteps on, dent and scratch and use, utilize against fights and stories and crimes between them, inside of them; it’s one badly placed novel after another, breathless page after breathless page, chapters full of bad, shallow sleep. 

The rain types against the paper of his back, guides Tim to the only nearby house he deems safe, unused, opened for emergencies only, for half bare utility belts and half bare veins, sleepless minds held by feet whose steps keep getting thicker, heavier; held by bones that keep falling asleep.

The air is grey and the window too high, slippery with everything wet between him and the city but Tim trained, trained and trained until nothing was too dry, too unsteady or too crowded, until nothing is too high to climb or too wet to grasp, to open, to fall against and he’s certain that security kicked in as soon as he touched the wooden paint, let water drip in uncertain patterns on dusty kitchen floors, too shallow for blood but it splatters in sibling sounds, crunches something in his stomach, catching against unease and the dream of being dizzy; he’s too drenched to be truly here.

Yet he _is_ , in a tiny kitchen with tiny imperfections, scratch marks across the skin of the floor, bruises left to not heal across the not corners of the walls, hints of a family: four chairs, a table, white plates. Stereotypes hung around its neck.

Tim sneezes, the room haunted by every sound he stifles against his teeth, the apartment tense, gravitating around him and the minutes he’s swallowing out of its space, the seconds he has yet to drink and if it’s waiting for something, for a hello, a meaning, a _moment_ to give, Tim doesn’t expect it to. He stopped expecting things, words, moments; stopped expecting to breathe even if that’s _unfair_ , unfair to the way he gulps in air and listens to conversations and shares his world with people and metal and cotton, unfair because more: he stopped _accepting_ things. Started to carry a stamp that reads, writes, tattooes rejection inside of his sleeves, on the bottom of his mouth, on the top of his lungs.

He rejects and rejects.

(If he rejects, there’s nothing else to not accept.)

Like him and help and _him_ , everyone in this town. They all can keep their mouths to themselves.

(But they don’t.)

“Look what the cat dragged in,” a sound says, loud within Tim’s senses and it might have been a string attached to Tim’s chin, grown into the tips of his jaws because his head snaps, follows the sensory map, the fading out synapses, follows it to the sensation of Jason; his voice, his shoulders, his shadow that hides between the blacks of the rooms and here it is: the cave in.

Jason is another of those things Tim had rejected.

“You look particularly drenched too.”

The world spins inside of him, like it’s drunk and can’t hold him upright, like it’s pinning the center of his gravity blindly, sticking it somewhere it feels him. (That’s what meeting Jason represents. What it looks like from under his skin. Unsteady ashes and brittle bones.)

“Jason?” he asks as if he doesn’t recognize, as if there’s still water between them, as if the ocean might slap into his back.

(It _might_.) 

“I’ll go again.” 

Tim turns to the window he forgot to close, grips the sides of himself he has to shutdown and then grips the sides of the wet window; there’s no more room for Tim’s lungs. The whole apartment is occupied already, is full to its brink with Jason – 

until Jason cuts out a shape just for Tim.

“Don’t be stupid,” he says, cuts, adores because somehow he’s still fond of Tim; the kiss on Tim’s neck still stands, still means what it did before, it's still valid.

(His attraction, the cut out place for Tim to breathe in, the rain that found them a shelter.)

And Tim doesn’t want to.

He doesn’t want to be stupid.

\---

He takes a shower, takes it to rinse the cold of the rain out, takes a shower that’s damp from when Jason stood underneath its joints, takes the clothes he’s two sizes underweight for, lets them search for places to hold onto, feels as if he’s made out of glass when half of them slip, waver where they grasp at his hips, balance out the shakes of his steps.

They fit Jason better.

There’s more of him to have, more of him to cling to, less of him to miss and he’s – easier to wear. He belongs to clothes easier than Tim. 

( _Easier_ but not perfect, they both look like they got shrunk, like suddenly the world is bigger than it was an hour ago, the two of them left out.)

The skins of their personas are drying bent over the stools, their own backs shaping over the kitchen counter, under the low shelves and high cupboards, a scour for something that works, that isn’t expired for their mouths, something to do until the rain feels weak and shallow, until it feels like stopping, like something to get home through.

“I found coffee beans,” Tim says, the door of the cupboard hiding his face from Jason’s shallow smile, the sudden flutter because – they’re both addicts. For a minute, they’re both made out of the things they like.

“But since the stove is a secret batarang compartment, we’re pretty much out of luck,” Tim adds, mourns the coffee they don’t have, closes the cupboard and watches Jason inspect the microwave, pushing a few buttons on the black front.

“This doesn’t work either. The fuck of a safe house is this?”

Carefully opening the fridge, Tim takes out a few bottles, turns their bottoms into his sight, scrunches his nose at most of them. “As far as I know, it’s been around since Bruce was. But it’s more an emergency weapon and medicine place?”

“ _Figures_. Do I want to know what’s inside the fridge?”

“Besides water and two year old milk you mean?”

“Ew, no thanks, that’s all I needed to know. No wonder curiosity killed the cat. But hey look, I found something edible.” Jason shows Tim the fronts of two boxes, heavy and full, something to soothe the hunger, the empty energy they’ve been running on.

“Cereal?” And if Tim’s skeptical, if he’s hoping for something more meaningful, for something he could take as an excuse to run, for something to rip this moment apart it’s because – because he’s in a kitchen that could probably rebuild itself into a fully functional crime lab in ten minutes, because he’s here with _Jason_ and his mouth Tim can recall, can recognize in phantom pressures inside of his neck, foreign and fresh and fractured, because cereal is _Dick’s_ meal of choice and Tim is left here without anything to choose from, it’s this or being stupid and he wasn’t supposed to gravitate either but he _does_ , something in him moves when Jason is around and Oracle is definitely going to tie her mouth and rub her eyes, the cameras open at all times, naked on the outside.

(And that’s how Tim feels too.) 

“It’s still about two months from its expiration date,” Jason offers, says it like it’s the punchline, the four of kinds or maybe royal flush, the winning card, the ace they all wish to find under their sleeves and –

it wins. Tim closes the fridge, gives up the idea of aimlessly, meaninglessly watching the frozen pizza get soggy and drench the tablecloth, smiles against the seams of his lips. “I’m in.”

“Cheerios or Frosty Flakes?” 

“Cheerios.” 

Jason throws him the box, offers a spoon. A spoon for soups and sauces and as it seems: hungry, humming bites of dry cereal, spoons for the food you don’t drop or scoop or pour out of its box, spoons for meals you’re not sure how you ended up eating.

(But you did.)

\---

There’s an interlude of them stuck in the kitchen, where Jason frowns at every date that has already passed and Tim’s fingers brush against the coffee beans for the third time, drawn to its texture or its faint smell and if Jason knew he could, he would chuckle; would go into the smoky hallways and find a home where they could grind and heat and pour it, a home where it could warm Tim’s fingertips but – Tim would say _no_ , would say _don’t bother anyone_ , wouldn’t accept any kindness.

(He doesn’t accept unkindness either; he just – denies anything Jason does. 

And no one might realize but – Jason has been silent for five years. Being quiet comes easy lately, sealing his mouth even easier but being too alone, too soundless for too long makes him feel dead again, makes him feel like he has to prove it, prove that he can talk and walk and fight and prove that he’s _alive_ , that he’s there for Tim to banter with.) 

“You know, if you want them so much, why not eat them?” He addresses Tim’s silhouette, the tense surprise of him being followed, of being seen lingering, of being seen human. “Drink soda on it and you can pretend your coffee went cold.”

Tim grimaces, catches Jason’s image with the corner of his eye. “That sounds extraordinary terrible.”

“Your _word choice_ is extraordinary terrible,” Jason answers, crouches down to search a shelf at the bottom of the counter, shallow in its width but heavy where his hand pulls, full of junk and stuff they could utilize if they had anything to use them on, if they had a wine bottle or dough or even a can of _anything_.

(They don’t.)

Counting the years the strawberry jam must have been sitting there, hiding behind a bowl of sugar, Tim sighs. “Oh shut up.”

(And so between the interval of Tim going through another cupboard and losing the excess, warm tones on his skin, Jason does.)

\---

It’s wet stools or the dusty floor or the bed, those are the options they have and for Jason, the solution is obvious, settled before they could vote and it’s like he’s been born into awkward relationships and Bruce’s safe houses and being one step ahead of Tim because his weight is curling into the sheets already while Tim keeps hesitating, keeps thickening the wariness they don’t talk about even if it’s in the tips of their fingers, keeps standing until Jason sighs and the patience in him grows into hurt, unfurls in the pit of his chest, expands until Tim sits down and buries his toes under the covers, pulls the pillow up so it can support his tired back, his aching shoulders. 

They eat into the sounds of rain, subdued dribbles and loud crunches, mute crackles of the plastic packets, the occasional bite into the metal of the spoon, the tap of it against the paper, against their lips. Tim wants to speak but his mouth feels full even after he swallows, like it’s rusty in its hinges, defective, as if it only has words that don’t fit, can only form certain shapes, shapes he doesn’t want Jason to spot, doesn’t want Jason to hear, to decode. 

They’re a mute movie, skimming across time without their languages being known, cast into their roles, written into being here, found for this moment. 

That’s what it is.

Filling a place in the world.

Jason’s elbow brushes Tim’s, touches him in a bump that derails his hand, the speed of his blood, the function of his bones and he jumps, moves away, doesn’t mean to but the electricity between them swoons his synapses, flows through them as if he’s drugged, as if they are bare and easy to thrill and – 

he might have bared Jason’s skin too.

Might because he says “Ouch.” and he’s finding worlds in the drawn lives on the box, might because then he’s not looking at _anything_ , not at Tim or the excavated place between them or his food, not at anything Tim could touch.

(It’s – accidents. They don’t ask, don’t speak, don’t warn, happen and leave the wrecks and shards of a person for another to cut their feet on, for another to fight against their sense of uselessness, for someone to force their bent and crushed pieces back into their skin, press them back inside their cracked chests.

Tim has seen those. Has worn those. Had his palms imprinted on their sides.)

“ _Jason_ ,” he drags out; can’t look at anything else _but_ tangible things; like his wrists, knuckles and fingers, the weight they are on his belly, how they can’t let go of the spoon, can’t let go of things he’s certain he has. ”We decided –”

“What? That when our elbows _accidentally_ touch you’ll move into another fucking country?”

“I moved less than two feet.” It’s nitpicky, it’s him not being easy to stand, it’s the defense of him: he’ll answer unimportant questions in the matter of one, elevated heartbeat. 

(As long as he has one.)

Jason snorts, breathes through the heavy, stiff moment, toys with the spoon. 

(Tim gets his focus back.) 

“We decided not to try this,” he says, jerks when Jason drops the spoon into the box, the emotion a clatter that wakes the sleepy, dry air; the motion cut short by the dip of the cereal, by the thick, shallow ground it builds. 

“That’s bullshit, Tim. _We_ decided nothing. _You_ did.”

Picking up the spoon, Tim can see where Jason holds his emotions, where he stores his posture, where he wants to be quiet.

(He sees where he needs to speak.) 

“It was _you_ who didn’t want to try. And I respect your decision. You thought I wouldn’t? After all the shit I saw and went through as a kid, you still thought I would force myself on you? C’mon; I’m not _that_ sort of an asshole. But it makes me fucking angry when you say _we_.” Jason frowns and the room settles beside them, an intervention. Maybe it’s reality, the clapboard, the cut of the director.

Whatever it is, it cuts Tim’s thoughts loose, cuts through them and they scatter, perch on his shoulders, soak the bed, cross Jason’s arms and tug at his wrists, tug at the skin Tim didn’t see. 

And – they tug on Tim’s mouth too.

“You would say no, too,” he says, eats a spoonful. It’s nearly therapy, it’s nearly eating the frustration out of his teeth and the sound – helps him. It helps him drown himself out.

Jason copies him and waits for Tim to swallow, for Tim to lick his teeth, for Tim to dip the spoon into the box again. 

(And then he speaks.)

“No. I really wouldn’t.” It falls off his mouth as if it wasn’t as important as is it, as if it’s some secret code to a destroyed thing, a frozen flower, something that has its shape but the structure is damaged, something you can’t repair, can’t build from its ashes.

It’s so _unfair_ , how for something broken, for something out of order – it picks Tim apart in a second. 

(But that’s what Jason does. He picks people’s insides apart, tangles the strings of their hearts, gets stuck in their circuits. That’s what Tim _thinks_ , what he tells to every knotted place inside of him. He feels it too, it grips and lingers and digs in but – he might crave it.

And that’s where his shame comes from, really. Truly, that’s what it comes down to: the things Tim craves.)

“I only said no –” he begins, wonders if it affects the room too. If the room is curious for them. (If the room is on anyone’s side.) “I said no because – because I didn’t want to get rejected,” he admits; wishes he didn’t have to be this misplaced, this out of himself. Wishes he could learn to be braver, to be honest at first try again; not only when the city confronts him, not when he’s with a person for the countless time, not after a stitch rips, not after someone leaves, not after things break.

(Could Jason understand?)

“How sweet and compassionate of you,” Jason answers, dips into the bitter colours of his voice, the back of his head a thud against the cheap wood, a vibration where Tim’s touching the frame too, points that rattle under his clothes.

He closes his eyes, the shaking drops. “It was selfish.”

“Yeah. It was.” Jason agrees, pulls his legs closer to himself, builds a peak with his knees. He sounds softer after the rustle stops, after the sheets settle. He sounds as soft as the leather of his uniform. “Everyone does selfish things Tim, once in a while. But do you know what would be really stupid?”

“What?”

“Abandoning them for it.” 

Tim looks up to meet the words and Jason’s palm lies open on the sheets, naked and dry and Jason’s eyes drop to it before they slide over to Tim’s face, to the shy, wary feeling Tim has under his throat, on the side of his lungs. 

Tim’s fingers hook against Jason’s, slowly, tentatively traveling through the map of his bones, from his forefinger to the round border of his palm, curls his hand into Jason’s, the quiet inside them seeping out through the touch, the brittle hold, the careful relation. 

It could be minutes, quarters of hours before Tim bumps into Jason’s thumb, before he laughs against the ruins of their similar silences.“Do you know what _I_ find a bit stupid?” he asks and Jason: he could never guess. Not with this kid, this mixture of Gotham and bones and memories, this boy that forgot to accept being human.

He could never guess.

“What?”

“Eating coffee beans and drinking soda on them,” Tim answers, laughs for a second time and _this_ Jason get. This Jason _knows_. It’s the kind of laughter you don’t control, don’t predict, don’t want but you shake with it anyway, can’t stop until someone laughs with you too. 

He squeezes Tim’s fingers and the bony edge of his wrist and when he does, Tim asks again.

“Want to be a bit stupid together?”

\---

Back in the kitchen, it’s almost like they’re set in another movie. Like their genres shifted or as if this is a part where they change, where they don’t say what they need to but share what they want, as if they might become something significant, something that won’t alter skylines but might alter _them_ and –

maybe it will.

(Maybe it might.)

They’re chewing on bitter, roasted coffee beans, sit on the kitchen counter and throw whole fistfuls into their mouths and chew, cough against the shards wrecked between their teeth, sticky where they glue themselves to the roofs of their mouths, bitter and heavy on Tim’s stomach, it churns a bit and water doesn’t help but it feels funny, it feels like being the age he is, like it’s alright to make small mistakes, to try to error and fail before he gets things right and this whole thing, this whole molten mess with Jason, these weeks they’ve been wallpaper to each other’s lives, these imploding scenes: they’ve been good for them.

So Tim swallows and drinks the bottle to the bottom, searches for the remains of all the stuff he ate; cereal and coffee beans and stupidly: he wants to pretend it’s breakfast, that it’s morning and they woke up here and Jason was staying through the whole after patrol traffic of Tim’s schedule, for the whole five am snacks and sleepy typing and adrenaline withdrawals; that Jason has seen Tim the way he lives.

(Instead he sees him drenched and in denial and desperate for a toothbrush, sees him gasping without his routines, giddy for something he never did.) 

“Oh God, this is _disgusting_ ,” Tim coughs, knocks his knee against Jason’s. “Why do people do this?” he asks and Jason snickers, shrugs, close enough that their elbows knock too. 

(This time, it’s entirely on purpose. 

This time, Tim stays.)

“Dares usually,” Jason answers. “Fun. Feeling disgusting together.”

“We _definitely_ managed the third one. Okay I need to brush my teeth now.”

Tim hops down the counter, puts the bottle beside the sink and he might have gone to the bathroom, might have followed the trail of doors again and might have been spitting minty foam already if Jason’s palm didn’t catch against his shoulder, if Jason’s fingers didn’t hold his face and Jason’s name didn’t slip away from him, slip to the safe house, all round on his mouth and all sharp in the air, a curious, “Jason?” that flickers across Jason’s mouth too, his thumbs moving against Tim’s lips, the tip of his chin, steady and warm and coffee-scented while Jason bends his spine.

“Say no if you don’t want to,” he murmurs and Tim tries to ask _don’t want to what_? tries to ask _why_? but it’s so obvious, how Jason’s skin races and his nose bumps into Tim’s, how they’re inches apart but Jason waits for Tim to speak the moment away, to go wash it off, to reject it but there’s nothing in Tim capable of doing that, nothing that couldn’t kiss Jason’s mouth, not when Jason does kiss his; when Jason is as bitter as Tim’s favourite coffee, as hot as his favourite bath, as good as Tim’s memory of him and there’s an undercurrent of Jason in Tim, an underground river that pools, dries, leaks and flows, pours down the underside of his skin, gravitates.

(It’s why he’s so dizzy, so anxious when Jason is around.)

And later, they’re going to ruin the slippery, soggy grounds, Tim is going to buy real coffee and Jason will bring hot sandwiches and they will eat them in bed again, shaking out the crumbs and at three am they will break up a robbery and save a girl’s purse and spend twenty minutes kissing beside Tim’s house until their mouths go numb and a drunk will stumble into the alley; later, Tim will text Jason and Jason will call him back.

For now, they’re both too small for their clothes, too cold to leave, too dizzy to run. 

For now: they’re both quiet.


End file.
